Tajiki Persian and the Altaic languages of Central Asia suffered from the U-turns of Soviet linguistic policy, and have been written with several different scripts in less than a century. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Turkey proposed a shared Roman alphabet, but each newly independent country followed its own path to affirm its identity and sovereignty. This April Kazakhstan’s president announced the adoption of the Roman alphabet by 2025.

Text accompanying “The mosaic of Indian writing systems” map

India is unique in having two official writing systems at federal level — the Roman alphabet and Nagari — and 12 across its 36 states and territories. Anglo-Indian, using the Roman alphabet and viewed as more neutral than Hindi, is the shared language of the elite, but Nagari script, aggressively promoted by some Hindu nationalists, retains an important role as a marker of identity. Writing systems and religions do not necessarily coincide: the mostly Hindu Tamils of Sri Lanka differentiate themselves from the Buddhist Sinhalese, while Hindu West Bengal and Muslim Bangladesh use the same Bengali script. West Pakistan’s attempt to impose Arabic script was a cause of Bangladesh’s secession in 1971.